Post-Merge Ethereum Block Builder Blocknative Raises $15 Million

Blockchain infrastructure company Blocknative announced Thursday that it had raised $15 million in Series A-1 funding, bringing the total amount raised by the Ethereum block processor to $34 million.

Blockchain Capital, Foundry Group, Rho, IOSG Ventures, Robot Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, HackVC, Industry Ventures and others are participating in the Series A-1 raise.

Launched in 2018, Blocknative processes transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. The company says this latest round of funding will go towards aggressively pursuing block building opportunities and expanding its product teams.

“Blocknative builds real-time infrastructure for Web3, specializing in what is known as the pre-chain layer,” said Blocknative CEO Matt Cutler Decrypt at 0xpo Crossroads in San Francisco. “Everything happens with a transaction from the moment there is an idea and it goes down the chain.

“We offer a variety of features and APIs to allow developers and merchants to take control of the Web3 transaction lifecycle,” continued Cutler. “Now after merging, these properties are actually very applicable to this new domain of block building.”

The goal of Blocknative, Culter said Decryptis to provide the infrastructure that eliminates user anxiety when sending transactions on a blockchain and to create a smoother network experience.

“We would certainly say that transactions are these mysterious and anxiety-filled things that are kind of the core of the network,” he said. “The transaction experience is pretty miserable, for the most part – everyone knows that experience of submitting and then the anxiety that builds as you wait for it to be verified.”

Following the Ethereum merger on September 6, 2022, Blocknative launched its MEV relay the following week. MEV, or “maximum mineable value,” refers to the process by which individuals who create new ETH can further profit by manipulating their control over the network and prioritizing certain users’ transactions. MEV relays act as a parallel channel connecting miners to robots that want their transactions included in a block.

While many had hoped the merger would see the price of Ethereum, now the largest proof-of-stake blockchain, rise, ETH is currently trading at $1,269, down from $1,629 the day after the merger took place, according to CoinGecko. The crypto bear market and the growing list of companies failing after the collapse of TerraLuna, Celsius and FTX don’t help matters.

Blocknative relay and builders have contributed more than 18,686 blocks to Ethereum’s mainnet, according to MEVboost.org.

In addition to the relay and block building, Blocknative offers other solutions including Transaction Preview, Web3-Onboard, Mempool Explorer, Gas Estimation and Transaction Distribution Network.

Blocknative has also recently started accepting transaction bundles from MEV applicants, enabling the production of even higher value blocks for its connected validators.

“As the world increasingly moves on-chain, Blocknative remains committed to meaningfully contributing to the web3 ecosystem through real-time access to pre-chain data, increased transaction transparency and web-scale infrastructure available at every block,” Cutler said in a statement.